I’m starting to think Hollywood is either entirely out of original ideas or knows they are guaranteed a minimum of a hundred million dollars at the box office if it remakes a movie and has a starting cast of Hollywood A-listers. There is no reason why The Magnificent Seven needed a remake. I have not seen the first one, but I imagine it was probably a pretty good movie when it was made…56 years ago. Not many great Westerns have been produced in this century; while they were good, most have been remakes (3:10 to Yuma, True Grit). There have been others. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and The Homesman come to mind. Still, there are few in the genre. I wouldn’t necessarily call The Magnificent Seven a poor movie. I definitely would call it an unneeded one. Unless you love westerns, there’s no need to see this movie. The Magnificent Seven is a movie you don’t need to see on the big screen.
Denzel Washington has saved an airplane, a freight train, a subway system, and a ferry ship. He even saved Christianity and nuclear war. Why wouldn’t he also save a small western town being taken over by a ruthless land baron bent on taking land that doesn’t belong to him? Denzel is your guy! I’m a big fan of Washington. He’s one of my ten favorite actors of all time, but I don’t always understand his choice of roles. These have included The Manchurian Candidate, 2 Guns, and John Q. I thought Unstoppable was a poor choice for him, too (because of his history of saving the world), but all of these proved to be solid career moves for him. The Magnificent Seven was not. You don’t need to see the original to know how this movie will end.
In Antoine Fuqua’s (Southpaw, Tears of the Sun) remake, a ruthless Bartholomew Bogue (a completely underused Peter Sarsgaard – Blue Jasmine, An Education outside of the movie’s first scene) threatens to destroy every man, woman, and child in the small town of Rose Wood if he doesn’t sell it to him for $20 an acre, a price that is far below market value. Unfortunately, the town residents don’t have the resources to fight back and are at the mercy of Bogue and his men. To prove his point, he kills a couple of innocent protesters on his way out. Then, Bogue returns to wherever he resides and leaves some of his men to run the town. Emma (Haley Bennett – The Equalizer, The Hole) loses her husband in the scruff and vows vengeance. She enlists the services of a local bounty hunter, Sam Chisolm (Washington), luring him with all the money she can muster from the town.
Knowing that the mission is nearly impossible but unable to say no (there is a personal vendetta between Chisolm and Bogue that we don’t see the reason for a long time, and then once we do, we don’t care), Chisolm enlists the help of some men from his past as well as someone who he meets in a present setting which he is impressed with. That person is Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt – Jurassic World, Guardians of the Galaxy), who quickly becomes Chisolm’s right-hand man. The other five who make up the seven include the mysterious and haunted Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke – Training Day, Before Sunrise), a man with a past that we don’t learn about but affects him in ways that feel forced and pop up at the most opportune of times to give the film some drama). Goodnight’s sidekick is the knife assassin Billy Rocks (Lee Byung-hun – G.I. Joe: Retaliation, G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra), who joins him on all his other adventures, so why not this one? The other three are a tracker named Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio – Full Metal Jacket, The Judge), a Mexican outlaw named Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and a Comanche warrior named Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier).
The job of this band of misfits is to return to Rose Wood, disband Bogue’s men occupying the town, prepare the townsfolk for warfare, and then wait for Bogue to return. It’s so formulaic that you don’t need to pay attention to what’s happening on screen. You might often not pay attention to the screen (if you’re like me), and you won’t miss much. The dialogue could be better. The acting could be better, considering the talent assembled. But I don’t blame the actors. There’s nothing you could do with this script. This movie is listed as a drama, but there’s no drama. There are far too many characters, and there isn’t a single one that we care about. Washington tries to make Chisolm dark, mysterious, and a good guy all at the same time. As soon as you know that he’s the story’s protagonist (i.e., when you see the preview), you know everything will be okay.
The action scenes were good. It didn’t feel like a great western, but I appreciate the extended shootouts. And I’ll also say that these seven guys don’t all survive. I was worried that the conclusion would get all Disney on me. But even those we died in the culminating battle, I could have cared less about. Even when the aftermath was complete, there wasn’t enough human emotion. Plenty of people died, and I’m not sure anyone who lived cared. Not once did this movie feel like anything other than a movie, and that’s disappointing considering the budget, cast, and director. Still, I’m not surprised. I had a strong feeling that I would be disappointed by this movie, and I was.
I’d skip this one.
Plot 5/10 (been there, done that)
Character Development 5/10 (there is not a single character in this film that you really care about. Hawke’s character has some past that is never really dug into, but you are still expected to believe how it affects him)
Character Chemistry 5/10
Acting 6/10 (Sarsgaard was underused; Washington and Pratt offered nothing. Hawke was just a mess. None of these actors should have been wasting their skills with this movie)
Screenplay 4/10 (predictable, unoriginal, and dull)
Directing 5/10 (nothing exciting; you don’t care what happens to the leads; the fight scenes do keep it interesting)
Cinematography 8.5/10 (nicely shot, but never really felt that small-town feeling)
Sound 7/10 (music, while decent, got kind of old pretty quickly)
Hook and Reel 5/10 (Sarsgaard wins you over in the first scene, but as soon as you get to know the main characters, you lose interest; it doesn’t help that this movie is the most predictable movie of the year)
Universal Relevance 3/10 (this remake was pointless)
56.5%
D-
- Young Guns
- The Hateful Eight
- Tombstone
- True Grit
- Unforgiven